Each week a different Sooner baseball player will report on his summer experiences while competing on collegiate summer baseball teams throughout the country. Oklahoma has numerous players competing in leagues in places like Alaska, New England and Arizona. In this initial feature, senior pitcher Casey Brown talks about his time on and off the field in Lake Havasu, Ariz., over the past two months.

CASEY BROWN
SENIOR PITCHER
HAVASU HEAT
(LAKE HAVASU, AZ)

In addition to playing baseball, I also have two jobs that I work out here. My first job is cleaning construction homes. We go in and clean the places after the builders are done working and clean everything possible. In my second job, I work down at a London Bridge t-shirt shop called Steve-O. Its kind of like a guys store we sell a bunch of t-shirts, board shorts and all that stuff. I get to serve in a security role there.

The biggest part about having a job out here is that it allows you to pay bills -- whether youre going to have enough money to live off of and pay your bills or if youre going to have to call home to Mom and see if she can help you out a little bit.

We dont have to worry about paying too many bills out here because our host families usually take care of us. We pitch in on groceries and help out with stuff around the house we do our own laundry and clean up our rooms and stuff like that. Most of my money goes towards bills back home like rent and truck payments. Then if I have a little spending money left over, we usually just go out and hang out on the lake.

Living with a host family has been a pretty neat deal. You get to meet some new people and you go in and talk with them and it seems to really make their day when you go in and spend time with them. A lot of the players out here live with host families that have kids, so you get to play with the kids, too, and teach them how to play baseball.

Were a pretty close-knit team out here. We go out together to go eat and hang out. Theres players from all over the United States here. Weve got guys from California, Alabama, Nebraska and lots of other places on the team. You get to learn from all of them as much as they get to learn from you. You learn how other people go about things from different parts of the country and it makes it a pretty neat experience.

Although Ive enjoyed meeting new people out here, its been nice having one of my teammates (Charlie House) out here with me. It kind of brought us closer together. Just having someone to talk to out here that knows a little bit about you helps. Our relationship definitely grew and weve become a lot closer friends.

The best part of my experience of playing summer ball has been learning from Steve Howe. Hes our teams pitching coach that used to play professionally for the Yankees and the Dodgers. Hes been a moundful of knowledge. Pitching-wise hes taught us little mindset type of techniques. Ive learned so much out here this summer from him.

Ive missed my family and friends the most since Ive been out here. It went by fast at the beginning and now its kind of slowed down. Im getting ready to come home in a couple of weeks which is probably why its slowed down some. Im ready to come back and start working out and lifting and just get back in the swing of things.